I have been bitching a little about the poor internet connections I have available where I live. But I am suspecting more and more that it is not a matter of the pipe into my house, as much as a matter of the larger picture. One reason for this realization is that sometimes downloads are very fast indeed. For instance Apple.com downloads. A couple days ago I downloaded a TV episode (Heroes), half a GB, in fifteen minutes. And today I had a download from Rapidshare.com clocking in at 800kb/sec! This is a first for me, usually I consider anything over 200k to be fast.
But my point is, the variation is just immense. It seems to be large parts of the Net making those variations. Because with the right server my connection seems very capable.
7 comments:
I don't know the reason, but that seems to happen to me too. One of the mysteries of the universe.
Speaking of Heroes, I can't wait for the new season!
I think there are issues with certain trunk connections (to use an older metaphor) in your part of the world. I know that where I live -- mainland United States -- if I (or my employer) have enough money, I can basically buy the mainstream internet as fast as any human on the planet can get it. That in Kenya, no matter how much you spend, you're only going to get a certain speed. And that in Britain, it depends to a large part on the specific township's administration during the 1990s.
What do you guys know about the new protocol that some corporations are trying to impose on us, of allowing restrictions on internet speeds for "average" websites but speeding up their corporate sites? As I understand it, it goes directly against the "democracy" of connections that we currently have, in that nowadays, the rate at which EVERYTHING comes in is basically identical -- it's whatever rate I at home or work chose to "get." They want it different, so that (for example) Nike's outgoing rate would be faster than Our Lady of Avila Annual Sisters of Charity Yard Sale's rate, such that my home choice would not be the only factor. The wealth and corporate weight of the sender as well would become a factor.
I'm in Australia. A 'fast' internet connection is 26 kps, and when you've downloaded 2 gigabites in a month it's slowed down by the company to 8 kps for the rest of the month. And you're whining that your connection is only 'only' 200?
No, I'm whining about that it's very, very uneven and unstable.
But I realize it's worse many places, I'm sorry.
The immense difference oft lies in the fact that your ISP, just out of common sense, does cache popular contents such as some TV shows, so that they don't have to download it many times for their users. In such cases, the transfer is essentially local and thus limited by your link to your ISP, and not the ISP's bandwidth with the outside world, which is shared among all of their users.
Another common factor is the speed of the remote server's connection, which will vary immensely from one server to the next. It is also true that remote servers addressing a wide audience (Apple, Youtube, etc.) will keep popular contents in "nearby" high-speed storage too, to avoid unnecessary congestion from the "phenomenon of the hour".
But the fact that you can sometimes achieve 800kB/s tells me that the "problem" in your case is probably with your ISP not having sufficient bandwidth to serve their users.
Would you qualify as "popular" and "current" the contents for which you achieve good speeds?
Probably yes.
You make some good points.
I think Apple for some years now have made use of that distributed-server network, Akamai. And Rapidshare also uses heavy-duty networks, and several of them.
OK you uber-geek dudes are way beyond me already. :) I'll stick with my old trunk line, thanks ...
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